Forbes Magazine calls Gabe Newell of Valve the next "billionaire of videogames."

Billionaires made by videogames are rare. They're even rarer when not working for a company like Nintendo or Blizzard. According to a Forbes article, Gabe Newell is closing in on these executives thanks to his futuristic vision as the co-founder of Valve.

However, Newell's literal vision was almost completely lost years ago. The article talks about a situation in 2006 and 2007 where Newell was forced to undergo double cornea transplants to fix a congenital disease called Fuchs Dystrophy. Newell once said he had "dead-people eyes," but after the operations could "see better than [he] ever had before."

And now, Forbes puts Newell on the track to becoming a seriously rich man. It estimates that Steam, the digital distribution platform with over 30 million users, owns 50-70% of the $4 billion download market, which exceeded physical PC unit sales in 2010 for the first time. Newell says Valve is "tremendously profitable," with analysts estimating the company earned revenue in the "high hundreds of millions of dollars" in 2010 due to reported year over year growth of 200%.

It's no wonder that Newell has no interest in selling Valve. He believes that the company brings in more money per employee than Google or Apple. Total value of Valve is estimated at $2 to $4 billion, for whatever those unconfirmed estimates are worth.

The success of Steam apparently helps out the entire industry, too. Forbes writes that publishers earn a profit margin of 70% on Steam, while at retail that'd be more than cut in half at 30%.

So while Newell is probably earning a mint for his time, it's a mint that goes back into gaming as a whole. I hear he's also really hot.

As someone who dosent use steam I dont care, I find valve overrated. But am glad steam gives devs 70%, but I dont like how stema cold easily do what the fck it wanted becuase it controls so much of the digital market. Well atleast its gabe not kotick.

Souplex:This is a sad day for gaming.*Cries a single, manly Native American tear*

Why ? :/

Is it bad that he succeds at promoting PC (and Mac) gaming without selling the company or going public (which would block its relative independance) ?

I mean sure, some may dislike Steam for various valid reasons, but overall, it had imho a beneficial effect: some may worry that they are so large that they shadow other similar digital distribution companies, but imho they increased the market visibility a lot, and the other companies also beneficed from that effect (even if I'm sure that now, they'd like to grab some bigger parts of the market), but that's fine, at least it's driving innovation further.

Personally, the only part I regret is that Valve still doesn't have more leverage to force the few remaining (largest) publishers to remove their additional redondant and frankly useless DRMs. They seem able to do in most cases, but large companies like Ubisoft seem still too powerful to be influenced.